OCUK programming project?
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I have to point out.. you guys seem to be going way over your heads. Honestly, a 3D game as a community project? I really think you're biting off more than you can chew 
Sorry if I'm appearing to be arrogant, pessimistic, ****ing on your parade, whatever.. but I'd start with something smaller first.
Sorry if I'm appearing to be arrogant, pessimistic, ****ing on your parade, whatever.. but I'd start with something smaller first.
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I have to point out.. you guys seem to be going way over your heads. Honestly, a 3D game as a community project? I really think you're biting off more than you can chew
Sorry if I'm appearing to be arrogant, pessimistic, ****ing on your parade, whatever.. but I'd start with something smaller first.
I get this feeling the more I read. It's great to have such high ambitions for the project but we need to be realistic... Especially if this really will be open to current non-programmers, as it's currently being touted.
I get the feeling that at the moment the project is too large for the number of people on board... Co-ordination would be a problem in itself not least with such high targets twinned with people who at present cannot code and possibly with many members who've never worked on an open source project before (Myself included) who may not realise the commitment that simply getting decision made takes, let alone producing something.
At the moment, it seems there are going to have to be people producing models, creating soundtracks and effects, actually coding the game and the online interface... Management... Lots of the little tasks such as maintaining the communication interfaces (IRC, forum, whatever). If 15 - 20 confirm participation its likely only 10 - 15 will actually commit when it comes to the crunch... And that's not many people considering the breadth of the project.
I genuinely believe a serious amount of time needs spending on developing an idea that will allow it to start basic with the scope to improve. At the moment I get the feeling that a lot of people are hoping they're going to part of producing a game to rival a current FPS or whatever... I'd consider thinking up a more unique game where people can be proud of what they've done and that isn't necessary compared directly to a current top flight game.
I had some real serious thought about this game last night.
Theres some areas I'm confused on....
Is the game single player, but then connects to a server and updates your character information to a server where you can trade items. So the 3d game is just single player.
Or
Is it MMO? everyone playing the game can play it together? As this is massively complex and I would suggest this for a future improvement!
Also I've looked into cross platform dev (never done it myself), I think this isn't going to be easy as your basically having to write everything twice, as Windows is a lot different to Linux, I think anyway, maybe someone can shed some light on this for me?
And 3D engines, I think orge3d looks good.
Game engines however we need to find one! I don't think anyone here has the skills to make a game engine within a couple years?
Mac
Theres some areas I'm confused on....
Is the game single player, but then connects to a server and updates your character information to a server where you can trade items. So the 3d game is just single player.
Or
Is it MMO? everyone playing the game can play it together? As this is massively complex and I would suggest this for a future improvement!
Also I've looked into cross platform dev (never done it myself), I think this isn't going to be easy as your basically having to write everything twice, as Windows is a lot different to Linux, I think anyway, maybe someone can shed some light on this for me?
And 3D engines, I think orge3d looks good.
Game engines however we need to find one! I don't think anyone here has the skills to make a game engine within a couple years?
Mac
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I'm building a VM now which will have jabberd, IRC, trac, and SVN. Though am I right in thinking that trac == SVN? Albeit in a different guise.
Added a few of you to MSN
Trac isn't SVN at all, Trac will connect to your SVN repo to retrieve source code, logs, check in information etc, but you still need to be running the SVN server too.
The one in our office runs through HTTPS using the Apache SVN module, the Trac interface runs as a CGI script system.
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I think once we've got a proper dedicated forum set up we can discuss this and decide properly.
Obviously i'm an SVN advocate as it's what i'm most used to and works very well, plus the Trac tie in is really rather good. But other people are going to have other preferences so we should have a Project Management forum...
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I have to point out.. you guys seem to be going way over your heads. Honestly, a 3D game as a community project? I really think you're biting off more than you can chew
Sorry if I'm appearing to be arrogant, pessimistic, ****ing on your parade, whatever.. but I'd start with something smaller first.
Got to say I agree completely, that's what I was hinting at with the utilities idea.
It's hard enough to get a group together to code something simple like a small app, utility or tool - never mind a full blown FPS game which also includes a web interface (??). Put it this way: dev houses take years, with 15+ experienced coders working full-time crunching out code, to produce even a crap game.
At least I think it would be an idea to code something (or two) small first - just to see everyone's abilities, get the organisation side of things sorted, see who's commited etc, and have a sense of accomplishment at getting a project under our belt. The longer something of worth takes to code, the more peoples interest will wain. If six months or a year have passed without anything tangible being produced, I seriously doubt anyone will still be showing any interest.
I think the phrase is running before we can walk
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See above.
A heirarchy is needed. (covered this in this semester of uni's group work)
Then people can ask questions and such in their "branch" of people, for instance then the branch leader can talk to other "branch" leaders.
You need one fixed point where discussion ends and someone has to say yes or no, it might not suit everyone but it has to be done! and in a group as big as this, you need multiple group leaders having the final say on what goes and what doesnt, in line with that the design brief goes with.
I wasn't trying to suggest a heirarchy isn't needed, far from it. But rather a heirarchy based on responsibility rather than a power structure. Basically, if anyone thinks they've got a boss and they're not getting paid - they're likely to bugger off.
Structure/heirarchy needs to be determined on who has time, who is committed, and how much responsibility they can shoulder.
Thanks
Did some reading last night and I'm a bit more upto speed now 
I did manage to make the worst atrocity known to FPS kind in about 4 hours this morning (at least an hour of that was my inability to remember how to add an integer to a wide string, only to find the library I was using had a class for dealing with that... :\), in about 198 lines of C++ (which I'll upload the source to if anyone here fancies a laugh). I think the process of implementing a 3D game can be greatly simplified by using appropriate software libraries, so long as we can get some people to actually make the models, and commit a bit of time to properly planning and designing the project, IMO. We're obviously not going to get very far if we just dive in head first without some real thought as to the structure of the project, but then I think it's doable.
If not then of course we're just discussing ideas at this stage so it's all good really. It's just a matter of deciding what we should do. Perhaps we should start by listing stuff we'd like to be able to do on our computers? Like that little icon on GPU-Z that lets you take screenshots of windows and uploads it to a server, it'd be awesome if you could do that for every window.
If not then of course we're just discussing ideas at this stage so it's all good really. It's just a matter of deciding what we should do. Perhaps we should start by listing stuff we'd like to be able to do on our computers? Like that little icon on GPU-Z that lets you take screenshots of windows and uploads it to a server, it'd be awesome if you could do that for every window.
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I've done a bit of Java and VB.net at Uni, but I'm fairly useless at it. A project sounded like a good way to get some more practice and brush up my skills, but it sounds like this is going to be way too advanced for me.
Here's a few notes from my experiences of open-source projects.
There needs to be an "owner." This can be more than one person, but no more than a handful. The *only* authority these people have is when it is crunch time for a decision and the rest of the community cannot decide (split vote or such) so because of this, keep it at an odd number..
being democratic can help.. voting for members of this "board" etc.
Their responsibilities include:
Maintenance of repository. Does everything work? Does everything have tests? Is there anything that needs trimming (of "fat")? Resolution of disputes/disagreements/non-agreements (see above)
Otherwise the project should remain completely open, any one can contribute, any one can check-out a copy.
I highly suggest that there be two repositories. One for incoming changes, that can be reviewed and then merged with the "real" repository which will contain releases. (A simple branch in SVN for this.)
This will allow for submissions from those that are not so confident, without the risk of 'ruining' an entire revision of the project. Everyone has done it before.. submitted something they didn't mean to, or forgot to run all tests before commit and finding out something broke elsewhere in the project because of what they worked on, or someone else updates to find a change they are not in agreement with, etc.
For managing the project progress and so forth, I highly recommend KanBan which, when summarised, simply means you have a prioritised list of objectives/MMFs (Minimally Marketable Functionality), and you swarm the MMFs in progress (and have a hard arbitrary limit of the number of MMFs in progress.)
It's also important for everyone on the project to realise and remember: Criticism isn't personal.
Good luck chaps.
There needs to be an "owner." This can be more than one person, but no more than a handful. The *only* authority these people have is when it is crunch time for a decision and the rest of the community cannot decide (split vote or such) so because of this, keep it at an odd number..
being democratic can help.. voting for members of this "board" etc.Their responsibilities include:
Maintenance of repository. Does everything work? Does everything have tests? Is there anything that needs trimming (of "fat")? Resolution of disputes/disagreements/non-agreements (see above)
Otherwise the project should remain completely open, any one can contribute, any one can check-out a copy.
I highly suggest that there be two repositories. One for incoming changes, that can be reviewed and then merged with the "real" repository which will contain releases. (A simple branch in SVN for this.)
This will allow for submissions from those that are not so confident, without the risk of 'ruining' an entire revision of the project. Everyone has done it before.. submitted something they didn't mean to, or forgot to run all tests before commit and finding out something broke elsewhere in the project because of what they worked on, or someone else updates to find a change they are not in agreement with, etc.
For managing the project progress and so forth, I highly recommend KanBan which, when summarised, simply means you have a prioritised list of objectives/MMFs (Minimally Marketable Functionality), and you swarm the MMFs in progress (and have a hard arbitrary limit of the number of MMFs in progress.)
It's also important for everyone on the project to realise and remember: Criticism isn't personal.
Good luck chaps.
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Good luck chaps.
Are you willing to invest time into the project? If so, I'd be very keen on seeing you in the "ownership" group. It is clear that you have an appreciation for what is necessary to get a project up and running.
I believe once some form of structure is in place things will start to look up a little but at the moment it's more like a few pages of discussion followed by a few posts where people seem to be suggesting the direction is set in stone... Followed once again by those that seem suprised by the direction taken.
The quicker some structure (Loosely, as you've suggested) is set up, and a way to make those decisions exists the better. Even simple poll's (Unfortunately not available here) would allow us to get an idea of what people want...
I seriously think we need to take stock of the situation and find a positive direction in which everybody is willing to contribute...
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I think your initial attempt is a perfect example of how difficult this will be to keep "friendly" for all skill levels. I'm sure there will be people reading this wonder what a "class" or "wide string" is... And to those people what you've coded might not look all that fantastic.
In reality, I've never done anything graphical before and I'm impressed with what you've done so far however to expect everybody to manage that pace is impossible.
I definitely suggest we have a group consultation/rethink as soon as possible and select something management. I liked the idea of a basic Tetris clone before... Simply because it has a little scope but could teach many of the basics. How about taking it into the third dimension? Etc. We'd than have to consider collision detection. Might sound scary to some of the new guys, but in which case they'd not stand a chance in doing an FPS where collision detection would need much more complex consideration.
I'm not trying to lower the tone of the project, but if there are people who at this minute may not have the ability to create, for example, a function that returns the sum of two integers then a graphical game might be a bit too hard to handle.
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Fair enough... I think the comments you've given so far have been valuable and I'm sure everybody appreciates you're too busy to commit something (I know I'd not want to bring what I do day-in day-out into the home)... But any other helpful ideas you can throw in the mix along the way would be great!
I think this is part of the problem with developing a full 3d game. To be honest, after the summer I will be fully blown into my final year dissertation at uni and I think it would be hard for me to maintain interest in this.
I think we need to remember that people will be doing this in their free time and won't be devoting hours tio it every day for a year. We also need to remember that there are some beginners here that are up for a challenge, but I feel that a 3d game would be beyond them.
why dont we do a top down game? like the old arcade games or something - it would be a bit more interesting than tetris and would have scope for development in the future but would stop us needing to develop it in 3d.
edit - damn was making my post when you submitted yours before me about 2d
and would have scope for development in the future but would stop us needing to develop it in 3d.edit - damn was making my post when you submitted yours before me about 2d